Several
people in the media have been making references to “parallel universes” since our publication of Wrong Part II;most notably Glenn Beck.

This
is a misinterpretation.The eleven dimensions are not in another or parallel
universe.They are present in this universe.This universe appears three dimensional, (or possibly with time, four?), but it is in fact 11 dimensional.

You
can see the 11 dimensions in the way matter and energy move in this three dimensional space-time world.We have yet to formulate an explanation of these other dimensions, but they are present in this universe.

Counselor:Oh, I thought Technical Corrections was the page where you corrected errors at this
web site.

Error?Here, at New RuskinCollege? . . .well, I suppose you could say that
when our students make errors they reflect back on us. . . .But no, Technical
Corrections is where we correct misconceptions about technology, out there,.
.. in the world.

Now,
what some of you may have been thinking about is Dr. Young’s thesis from 1979:the many worlds hypothesis.He proposed parallel universes.

The
idea of 11 dimensions is different from this.For some time physicists proposed
that the other dimensions are curled up and do not show themselves in our three dimensions.More recently they propose the existence of these other dimensions“outside
the ‘brane’" (short for membrane) of our three dimensional universe.But
even here the membrane in which we live is still part of the other proposed dimensions.

Or for
example, in a Black Hole where we are told that matter the size of the Earth are reduced by gravity to no bigger than a golf
ball.How is this possible?It is
not possible unless matter alters, becomes something other than what we have know it.

It seems
clear to me that matter must be reduced back, fused back into, the multiple dimensions from which it originated.Matter which in these three dimensions appears to occupy a given area, space, in the Black Hole is returned
to the originating dimensions like a pile of beads being slid back on their string. Yet if so, these dimensions are still
a part of our universe, the matter may move from the observed three dimensions back into its constituent dimensions but it
remains in this one universe.

The
mathematicians who have discussed these dimensions do so as if they were purely imaginary, or mathematical, not real physical
(all be it not three dimensional) things, forces.I propose that this universe
moves as a kind of hologram, composed of these dimensions which infuse the world, whose entanglement creates the world, and from which our three dimensional universe
unfolds or tumbles out of the 11 dimensions.But these dimensions are present
here, not parallel, and real physical facts, just on the other side of the familiar three dimensions, yet all of which is
in one universe.There may be a light dimension which manifests or reveals itself
in these three dimensions by the sympathetic movement of light in our three dimensions.(Light in our three dimensions is probably the result of three of the 11 dimensions as it can be both a wave and a
particle.)

For
example, light travels at 180,000 miles a second.Physicists tell you things
like that and we nod our heads, ‘yes, of course.’But think about
it.A second?Are they mad?No, we never ask them that.They have
us completely cowed.But just think about it.

You
put two D cell batteries in a flashlight and the energy in those batteries is sufficient to accelerate photons to 180,000
miles a second?No, not even accelerate, they start from your flashlight at that
speed.At that speed!Instantaneous
as it were.You stand on a mountain and signal another on another mountain, fifty
miles away and you think nothing of it? Light a match and the energy on the match head is sufficient to race across these
great distances?And so fast?

I
think it impossible.Yes, even though I have seen it with my own eyes, still,
I say it is impossible.What other explanation can there be?I propose that light is, if not exactly one of these dimensions, as close an approximation you are likely
to find in this universe.In a since when you switch on your flashlight you are
not so much sending photons as tickling the universe, i. e. one of these dimensions.In a since these photons are already there in the matrix of this world, in the structure of space-time.The filament only agitates this dimension, or tickles it.Light
is the mirth of the universe.

Light
waves are perpendicular to the direction of propagation because this dimension interconnects to the others in a certain manner,
not yet explained.Electro magnetic waves form themselves the way they do because
of the interconnections of the 11 dimensions.

Counselor:But you do not know what that interconnection is?

No.These dimensions are showing themselves in our familiar three dimensions---

Counselor:But you do know how to demonstrate this?

No.
For example matter being ejected from a star is traveling we are told at sixty thousand miles per second.Sirs? A second?How can this be?Again it seems fantastic unless, in some sense the matter is already there, in these other dimensions.All matter and energy in the familiar dimensions are manifestations of these 11 dimensions.Not parallel but---

Counselor:I’m trying to understand . . . why have you taken such an interest in this?You are not a physicist?

No.

Counselor:No training?

Well
some classes . . . I . . . have read . . .

Counselor:I want to understand.Why . . .

Well
perhaps we should change the subject.I only wanted to clarify. . . not parallel universes.One universe. One turn.Only.

Counselor:I just want. . . to understand. . .

No.
No, let’s change the subject.

Then
later.......

Oh,
did you happen to see this?It seems Dr. Hawking has come around to my way of
thinking. . .he no longer believes in parallel universes.

Counselor:What?!

Yes,
see it,take a look here:

Sorry,
no parallel universe, Hawking says

By Associated
Press

Jul 22, 2004 - 07:49:32 am PDT

DUBLIN,
Ireland -- After 29 years
of thinking about it, Stephen Hawking says he was wrong about black holes.

The renowned CambridgeUniversity physicist formally presented a paper Wednesday
arguing that black holes, the celestial vortexes formed from collapsed stars, preserve traces of objects swallowed up and
eventually could spit bits out "in a mangled form." Last week, in an interview with the British Broadast Corp., he revealed
he had changed his long-held thinking on black holes.

Hawking's
radical new theory caps his three-decade struggle to explain a paradox in scientific thinking: How can objects really "disappear"
inside a black hole and leave no trace, as he long believed, when subatomic theory says matter can be transformed but never
fully destroyed?

Counselor:This can’t be.This is some sort of trick!Let me see that.

Hawking's
new theory produced waves of skepticism and puzzlement from leading physics professors. Two in the front row -- William Unruh
of the University of British Columbia
and Robert Wald of the University of Chicago
-- shrugged and shook their heads in disbelief as Hawking spoke.

"Hawking is completely revising his prior belief that
what goes into a black hole is washed out. Now he believes that anything emitted from a black hole can be identifiable back
to its source," said Wald, an expert on black holes. "He's running away from what we still believe."

Unruh said: "Part
of the problem is he's providing so few details, so it's impossible to know whether we can believe these calculations. Stephen
Hawking's not stupid, so we're going to take what he says seriously ... but the whole theory we're hearing seems extremely
speculative."

Not long ago, Hawking was just as certain that black holes destroyed whatever they took in.

In
1997, he and Caltech physics professor Kip Thorne made a well-publicized bet with a particle physicist, John Preskill, that
"information swallowed by a black hole is forever hidden from the outside universe and can never be revealed, even as the
black hole evaporates and completely disappears."

Counselor:This is some type of trick . . . you have changed the space time continuum haven’t
you?You found out about this then went back in time to post your own theory
didn’t you?

Yvonne!

Counselor:Tell me the truth!

You
know it is not very flattering for you to be so surprised ----

Counselor:What?Surprised!That a world famous physicist should completely change his theories, theories that he has had for 30 years,
after you posted your ----

Sweetheart
you are getting upset. . . .

Counselor:Upset?You expect me to believe ----

Anyway
we haven’t yet discovered how to transform the space time continuum,Dr.
Ho Li Chung hasn’t even been born yet.He isn’t due until 2121.

Preskill
said he was pleased to have won the bet with so many witnesses present, but was sad too. "It's been so much fun talking about
this issue for such a long time. What are we going to argue about now?" he said to laughter.

Preskill said he was looking
forward to seeing Hawking's much more detailed paper on the subject next month. "I'll be honest -- I didn't understand the
talk," he said.

We
have perhaps spent too much time discussing the dangers of biotechnology.

Some
may now wonder if it is worth the risk. First of all, for reasons provided elsewhere in NewRuskinCollege, there is no alternative.The technology is unavoidable.

Secondly,
the period of terror risk is greatest now and will decline as our knowledge increases, and that knowledge will allow us to
increase our defenses against bio attacks.(Of course the technology will transform
human kind and the world but unlike many commentators we here at NewRuskinCollege welcome everyone of these changes, we hold no sentimental attachment for
the human race as we have known it.As for Mother Earth, we look forward to improving
her.)

As
an example of what can be done with this new technology consider desert reclamation.For all of our existence we have had to fight for our survival.The universe
was not engineered for our benefit.We are about to change this.Mother Nature proceeds by an entirely different route from our own engineering.For one thing, Mother Nature, is satisfied, is delighted, by whatever she produces.We on the other hand have certain standards that our creations must meet.They must be beneficial for us.Therefore our creative process is more
constrained than is Mother Nature’s.

However,
we do not have to try a billion different combinations in order to find the desired outcome.Mother Nature from our perspective is wasteful, where as we can go from step to step just covering what is required
to achieve our desired results.We are more efficient.

Deserts
are an example of waste.Mother Nature does not so regard them but we do.Deserts are just one example of waste in the natural order.What is the carrying capacity of the planet Earth?All of
our estimates, all of our thinking, is based on our history, our experience.But
this is just the point.We do not have experience with bio technology.What we regard as the natural limits are about to be blown away.

Nothing
has prepared us for the bounty we are about to experience.What is the carrying
capacity of a square mile of South Pacific Ocean?How
much plankton can it contain.How many fish?We have no idea.The Southern Oceans are a kind of desert.We will very soon be able to engineer the entire biosphere, algae to whales.There are no limits.

Unlike
Mother Nature we can skip all the intermediate unwanted states and move directly to the optimal.For example, recently a Salmon has been designed with a gene that allows it to produce a protein that can
be metabolized more efficiently.The Salmon grows faster.Same fish, same ocean, same amount of sun light, same inputs (as the engineers say), but a higher output.We have a word for this:ef-fi-cien-cy.

Now
think, not just one gene in one fish. How much life can a square mile of ocean hold?There are no limits.

Consider
the SaharaDesert.First we design a grass that devotes most of its energy to developing roots. Spread it during the rainy
season.Seed the clouds with it.We
thus develop a matrix of roots.The seeds go dormant in the summer and start
again with the next rain.A layer of bio material develops, grows on its own,
all across the Sahara.Each season a newly engineered seed.For example, tubers that devote their
energy to absorbing water and holding it inside far months into the summer.Other
grasses develop stalks and die off in the summer only to regrow from those stalks in the next rains. Like tree trunks the stalks grow a new ring each rainy season.All
the plants are engineered to live with little or no water for most of the year.

With
time, the sand storms subside under this growing blanket of biomass.Walk on
the desert now and it crunches under your feet. Tubers burst with fresh mushy water.More seasons pass, more grasses are developed, engineered, and behold: savannah.

Place
the Sahara under a bank of North South oriented artificial clouds, high up in orbit above the atmosphere,
and the heat moderates, the rains come sooner and stay longer.The artificial
clouds are a mile wide and 1,000 miles long, each separated from the other by5
miles, stretching out across the continent of Africa from the Nile to the Atlantic.They cast shadows down on the desert like a giant venetian blind, alternating sun
and shadow, moderating the environment.Now after 10 years the Sahara
has a top soil base of one to eight feet thick.

Now
tell me what is the carrying capacity of the SaharaDesert?The planet Earth?

We
have no idea.We have no way of judging this.We have not inhabited such a world since the Garden of Eden.

The
most common misunderstanding about stem cells is the failure to understand that the genetic material in the cells, which are
the subject ofstudy, is not itself compatible with any particular patient.The current controversy is over research, not medicinal application.

Stem
cells have an important future role in the new regenerative medicine.However,
these medicinal stem cells will be engineered for the particular patient by inserting the patient’s own DNA into embryonic stem cells or by growing
the patient’s own stem cells, so called adult stem cells, in vitro, outside his body in the laboratory, possibly
correcting their genetic function, and then reinserting them.

Note
here that the donated embryonic cells will have their DNA removed, only the cytoplasm, (or the body of the cell that surrounds its nucleus, which is a kind
of packagingof the cell), will remain when the new, i. e. the patient’s
DNA, is inserted.
The question may arise whose cell is it?Is it the patient’s or is it the donor’s cell?Clearly it
is the patient’s as it is the DNA which makes it specific.

The
reader may question:well but what about the donor’s DNA, is it just destroyed?Did we kill it?Just to make room for the patient’s
DNA?This is really too silly.

Perhaps
you should talk over your emotional problems with Yvonne.If you are going to
make a moral issue about this donated DNA,if you are going to call it life, you are evidencing
an emotional attachment, to a molecule, that seems out of place.Are you really
not dealing with some other issue and just transferring these emotions to this question?

Consider
just for starters that in the case of embryonic stem cells there has been no conception.The embryo has not been fertilized.It is a cell. An egg.An unfertilized egg.If not fertilized in two weeks it was
going to be discarded.You want to treat this as a funeral?Every month a woman is not pregnant you are going to hold a wake?(Well, wait a minute, this idea may have some merit . . .)

The
correction of the patient’s genetic material may be for damage of congenital origin, damage that existed at birth, (conception), or the repair of damage
caused by disease or the environment, for example, radiation or chemical damage.Or
consider the damage caused by age itself.At the ends of the DNA molecule is telomerase, which binds the
ends of the DNA
molecule the way the tips on your shoe laces keep them from fraying:

“Telomeres
are DNA sequences
found at the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes which maintain the fidelity of genetic information during replication. Under normal
circumstances the telomeres become shorter and shorter with each cycle of cell division. A sufficiently short telomere is
believed to signal the cells to stop dividing. The telomerase enzyme is a ribonucleic protein that synthesizes telomeric DNA on chromosome ends.”Telomerase
Activator Cloned, By Sean Henahan, Access Excellence

http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/SUA11/telomerase897.html

Current
research on embryonic stem cells was focused on how telomeres are renewed, and may now have been completed, (without a degree
in the field and working in research labs, it is difficult to keep up with the researchers,(plus they have a few IQ points
on me)).Old DNA when put into the embryonic stem cell developed new telomeres.This is part of the reason embryonic stem cells were studied.But research
is progressing quickly and from this article it appears their has been some success.

I had
thought that first stem cells, with the patient’s DNA, (repaired), would be used, to reimplant the corrected DNA into the patient.For
example, with your telomeres rejuvenated your stem cells would be young again and when injected into your heart wall, for
example, would improve your heart functioning.Or when injected into your cranium,
a million stem cells per treatment might do, would improve your brain functioning, allowing you to create new neuron networks.

My thinking
was that because this repaired DNA would come back to you in its own packaging, the stem cell, the operation of implanting it would be easier.However, I have recently read a professor of molecular biology say that he thought that insertion ofrepaired DNA into the patient’s existing cells, using a viral shell designed for this purpose, would become
practical first and engineered stem cells would follow.As I say it is difficult
to keep up with our colleagues in this fast changing field.

Counselor:Colleagues?

Well,
sort of, we are all men of science.

However,
for our, ah, science, the important thing to understand is that no one foresees baby farms where stem cells are “harvested.”(Unfortunate it is that this term is occasionally used by our colleagues, who know
more about their science than they know about rhetoric.)Fetal stem cells are
of interest for basic research however the field will soon exhaust this area of study, may already have done so, and will
move on to using engineered stem cells of our own fabrication.

However
this may be, our point of concern here is that in any case this is a temporary area of research.The application of this research will be to use stem cells that are compatible with the patient’s
body, i. e. have the patient’s own DNA.Therefore there is no risk that fetal tissue will be
needed in medical application of this technology as the DNA must be removed and the patient’s DNA inserted.

And yet there is
a bill before the Senate that would make this removal and insertion of DNA a criminal
offence.Kristen Philipkoski, of WIRED, recently reported, “Dr. Irving
Weissman, an adult-stem-cell researcher, outlined some successes he's had with the cells. But he went on to urge for a change
in Bush's policy. He also had harsh words for a bill sponsored by Brownback that would outlaw therapeutic cloning, also called somatic cell nuclear transfer, which involves extracting
stem cells from the embryonic clone of a patient. Researchers believe it could eliminate potential immune rejection because
a clone would be a patient's exact genetic match.”

This is unbelievable.We propose to make scientific progress criminal?

Dr. Weissman recently said, "I urge you to think hard whether you wish to overrule good science and medicine
and ban some kinds of biomedical research and therapies for the first time in American history.In my own personal moral view, those in a position of advice or authority who participate in the banning
or enforced delays of biomedical research that could lead to the saving of lives and the amelioration of suffering are directly
and morally responsible for the lives made worse or lost due the ban." (WIRED, 7-15-04)

Having
considered embryonic cells, (unfertilized eggs), let us now question the use of fetal stem cells. These cells are again of interest for research, not medical application, for reasons already given.Once the DNA is removed we can say it belongs as much to the patient as the donor.If you are going to argue that the DNA molecule is itself life, that its removal from the cell is murder, you have strayed far from the
common understanding of “life,” and you trivialize murder. If your
moral reason does not allow you to distinguish between a cluster of cells in a Petri dish and a stack of corpses then can
it still be called reason?

All
DNA, embryonic
or fetal, comes down to us from our very first mother.All life on Earth shares
a common ancestor.Our genes are shared across a line of ancestors that connect
us with millions of other creatures, our brothers and sisters, swimming in the sea and flying in the sky, all the beasts of
the Earth.

This
DNA does not
belong to anyone species.Its removal and insertion, even our eventual fabrication
of it, is a continuation of this 4 billion year old process called evolution. At
the present moment our researchers are not able to write genetic code one base pair at a time.They still must borrow the lines of code from Nature. The DNA they cut and paste, move, yes and remove,
is 4 billion years old, handed down to us from our first mother.

This
tissue, this cell, this molecule, is older than any government, older than all of our human history.If you would not allow our scientist to examine this tissue, cell and molecule, yes and manipulate it,
you would deny them the very substance of their science.Unlike our science of
metaphors and symbols, this messy stuff, is the material of their science.

For
our science also note that interfering with the scientists over what is a trivial issue of letting them examine tissue, a
practice allowed them for several hundred years since the Enlightenment, only alienates one of the few academic communities
not already openly prejudiced against conservatives.

Our
President by invoking a rule that allows the practice of examining old tissue, stem cell lines already in existence,but which forbids funding for the examination of new tissue, new lines of cells, (not
babies), has created an utterly confused and indefensible moral distinction.

Says Peter Van Etten,
president and CEO of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, "The current policy is based on an arbitrary factor -- a specific cutoff date unrelated
to science -- that negates important technical progress that has been made in the field outside of federally funded research.The truth of the matter is that we need more stem-cell lines in order to provide better
models for studying and curing a wider range of human diseases." (WIRED, 7-15-04)

And
again, for what end, as the rule only interferes with current research, which is a passing phase?The President, for no great moral reason, (not great because he does allow funding with the old tissue
lines), has thrown an administrative stumbling block in the way of a community of academics with which we would do well to
strengthen our ties not exacerbate.Because there is no great moral issue, if
there is he must be consistent, (I do not see it), his action appears capricious and arbitrary.

And,
of course, as usual the President has never bothered to provide an explanation.(He
has said that what he likes about being President is that he does not have to explain himself.)

And
so we have an example for our next issue of This is What is Wrong with the Republican Party.For no discernable reason we alienate the most progressive and advanced members of the community, without explanation,
in apparent ignorance of the greater issues and strategy.Wandering around lost,
waiting for an ambush.Ah, yes, to be a Republican.

Several reporters have described
how national identity cards can contain the biometric data and this will allow the verification of the person presenting the
card, because the bearer’s identity can be confirmed on the spot by checking
his fingerprints, iris, or facial scan to authenticate the card.

What is worrying about this
is, if they can get this wrong, something seemingly so simple and obvious, how much else have they gotten wrong?

The identity system is of no
use if the information can not be trusted.Your driver’s license, your
passport, already contain your biometric data, your face, some states, (I think only West Virginia
now), have a thumbprint.In other words there is no advance in identification
unless the data can be made more secure.A “smart card” might pose
a momentary difficulty to a counterfeiter but since it is in the possession of
the bearer its authenticity will always be questioned, and therefore offers no advance in security.

The key is that the applicant’s
claim of identity be checked against a secure data base.In other words a computer
system, a data base, whose security can be trusted is what is needed to advance security not biometrics.

Biometric data, analyzed by
computer does itself offer advantages and represents an advance in identification but, without the secure data system, biometric
data itself is not much of an advance.It is the secure system which is important.

Biometric face data,
(or even walking data, a record of your gate, or manner of movement), allows
systems to remotely survey a crowd and look for known suspects.But, again, the
suspects are “known” because their biometric data has already been
acquired and entered into the system.The advantage of biometric data in general
application is not that it allows this automated remote sensing, but because it allows the applicant to appear at a check
point without any papers at all.As long as the secure system is up and
operating, the applicant's finger prints, iris, voice, face, etc. serves as his identity document.

Therefore the so called smart
card is redundant.If you read the smart card and do a scan of the applicant
you have not advanced the process unless you can then check the identity with
a secure data base.I would propose instead of a smart card the applicant carry
a personal transponder.Thus when the applicant approaches the checkpoint, when
in line for example, the transponder can answer an electronic query from the checkpoint giving the applicant’s identity.The checkpoint robot can then summon up the record from the secure data base so that
it is ready when the applicant gets up to the camera, or finger print reader, or iris scan, or voice analyzer.

This is the idea behind “rolling
checkpoints.”No one has to stop in line at a checkpoint unless the identity
fails to check, and then only those applicants need be detained, everyone else can roll on through.This system will then allow a second layer of defenses to be laid on top of the existing system.Here a virtual monitoring system can be created from the data records.When someone moves out of the ordinary routine their diversion from the routine can be noted and brought to the attention
of authorities.

Normally this Palestinian’s
car goes from home to the market on Tuesdays but today, this Tuesday, it is approaching an Israeli check point and the driver’s
transponder does not match the camera scan.Warning, duck behind the blast wall!Also in bio warfare the records of movement can be used to establish a “virtual
quarantine” of those who have been exposed to the threat.

The key to these systems is
not the smart card but the wireless server.The mobile units and checkpoints
need to be able to access the server wirelessly.The server itself needs to be
kept secure from potential intrusion.Once the system is set up the information
moves both ways, it is not just an inquiry only system.

In Iraq
for example the troops should have been issued digital cameras, finger print readers, and wireless laptops, and these could be used to take scans of the people the troops questioned.Each face would be tied to a name, date, time, place, etc. and sent to the server.We were told that a census would have to be completed in order to hold elections, however, the entire country could
have been photographed and recorded in a few weeks after the end of the war, if such a system were issued to the troops.All this technology is off the shelf consumer goods.

Even though the first contact
might not establish an independently confirmed identity, if the applicant points to his home, the GPS
location can be recorded, along with his other assertions, i.e. name, date of birth, etc.If later the same face is identified in another location the story can be checked against the data base, and suspects
whose movements are suspicious can be arrested.Even if only lies were given
to our troops on the first encounter, the second, third, etc. scans and recording of information will soon show who has been
giving inconsistent information.

So though computer scans of biometric data is more accurate, and versatile, allowing for automated remote sensing,
the real key advance is the wireless data base from a secure server.

This then would be just one
example of the things that were not done in 2002 in preparation for the Second Gulf War.We did not “staff out” the preparations because the Republican
Administration thinks that government is the problem.

But this is not a particularly
important example of the failure of government.Far more damning is the failure
to properly support basic biological research.Since the 1970s the path forward
in bio-medical research has been clear.Every dollar invested in research has
paid off handsomely in the health of the people.There is never going to be a
time when we do not want to know how our immune system works, why our DNA ages, how we
can improve our cognition.In the technical jargon of Public Administration this
type of investment is known as a no brainer. And yet research facilities sit idle even as the threat of bio attack grows
with each passing day.

The most common misunderstanding
is that the tolls or usage charges are necessarily designed to discourage use.This
misunderstanding occurs because the most publicized use of this technology has been to limit traffic in London’s
city center.Here the charges were designed to discourage or limit traffic.However, this need not be the case for normal use.

The charges can
be made to vary with the value of the use.A lane of highway in an urban area
is more valuable than a lane of highway in Nebraska.(No offense Nebraska.)At rush hour many motorists may have wished for another lane, in there direction, however the cost of providing the
extra lane in their urban area would be higher than providing another lane on a highway in Nebraska.The value of a highway varies with location and time of use and the user is fairly
charged for these variables.

However, as simple
gas tax is paid at a constant rate depending on the gas mileage of the user’s vehicle.Whereas the tax charged by metering the transponder can be apportioned to the value consumed or conferred on the user.Even if the transponder metered “use tax” only replaced the gas tax the
consumer would be benefited by having the tax assessed, based on the value derived.

Then too, there are
larger issues.Now that a system of payment has been established by the use of
transponders, the roadways could be privatized and the capital thus raised used to pay off the national debt of $7.2 trillion.The balance could be credited to Social Security and invested in biotechnology.Advances in biotechnology could allow the faster advent of Regenerative Medicine which
in its turn could allow us to postpone the retirement age which would improve the fiscal soundness of the Social Security
system.This would allow the Social Security Administration to be more patient
with its capital in the hands of the entrepreneurs which would in turn allow for a faster accumulation in the trust funds.

All this from eliminating
government ownership of highways.However, if it seems to the reader that we
have traveled too far a field from our starting point let us return to transponders, and allow me to demonstrate more clearly
why anti market attitudes are holding us back and how this anti market prejudice relates to transponders:

You may have noticed
that now whenever tanker trucks are stolen there is increased concern on the part of our authorities.This is, of course, because of terrorism.Transponders hidden
on these vehicles could allow for their rapid location.Even if the thieves located
and removed the transponders vehicles passing checkpoints without leaving their transponder code would be suspect.Vehicles passing with some other vehicle’s code would be suspect, (license tags can be scanned as
confirmation and the vehicle’s transponder history, (movement), can be automatically double checked.)

As it happens this
system already is in use at many airports for example.Every time a commercial
vehicle enters the airport its transponder is checked and a service charge, (use tax), is recorded.Bus companies use their own radio system to track their vehicles as do trucking companies, and cab companies.In fact on examination we discover that wherever there is an ownership, proprietary,
interest transponders are already in use to track vehicles.

It is only in
the public sphere that their use seems new and novel.In Maine
when the pressure became too great for the State bureaucrats to resist they finally agreed to try an “experiment.”An experiment!?As if this were some
new untested exotic technology which might not work in Maine?Idiots?No.They
were trying to protect the jobs of the unionized toll collectors.Jobs in Maine
are hard to come by.So the government workers and even the managers, (do not
count on the government managers to protect you, they sold you out a long time ago),they all sought to fight (labor saving) technology as long as they could.

Now the fact that scarcity
of jobs in Maine might have more to do with the fact that they rank 35th in per capita income but 19th
in taxes than it has to do with the merciless pace of technology overtaking toll collectors is never considered when discussing
unemployment in Maine.Government’s mismanagement is not up for discussion.

And if the reader is
winking at this page in self satisfaction that he understands the deep point being made here, even if the backwoods men of
Maine are too stupid to see the obvious, think again.What if I could demonstrate in the next sentence that the reader, blindingly brilliant knower of the truth
he may be, has his whole life passed by even a more obvious fact of government mismanagement without ever remarking on it?

Have you never
wondered what was in those big refrigerator sized boxes that you see on the corner of every light controlled intersection?No?Inside those boxes are electromechanical
devices that were originally designed around 1918, the year of the Communist Revolution in Russia.For nearly a hundred years you have without so much as a “second thought”
allowed the state to control, own, operate, regulate traffic on every controlled intersection in America,
the land of the free.Am I impertinent
to ask why are you such hypocrites?

If you owned
these intersections, if your income was derived from how efficiently you operated these intersections, you would have wanted
to know how many people you could move through your system, you would have found ways to speed up traffic, not slow it, certainly
not jam it.

For example,
in the Bay Area, the Post Liberal Bay Area, government bureaucrats deliberately try to find ways that can impede traffic.They feel justified as they have been told by their Marxist professors that automobiles
are evil and are killing the Earth.These deliberate policies of sabotage are
not limited to traffic.Sewer charges are now over $20,000.It is thought fair to the post liberal that new house holds should be made to buy their own sewer
system, the older residents having already “paid” for “their” sewers.That the newer households are also the younger ones, with lower incomes, and less wealth, does not register with the
post liberal.Similar fees and delays, (WashingtonDC now takes one and a half years to approve a home), are manifestly unfair, unjust, and
go unremarked by the post liberal.

These cost are shifted
onto the users, the young households for example, not by the operation of the market but by government fiat.The government is not raising its price and hoping to see if the consumers are willing to pay, not mutual
consent, the government is using its power of coercion to force payment.

Our roads then are
just another example of state inefficiency. This is the difference between state ownership and private ownership:Because everyone owns it, no one owns it, so no one cares to improve it, to make it more efficient.

In the normal,
(private), operation of the market, contending sectors, individuals, try to shift cost off on to other sectors, while trying
to maximize the profits for themselves.For example in our earlier discussion
of taxes we pointed out that taxpayers seek to raise their prices and avoid other’s
attempts to shift their taxes.As a practical matter even if we can raise our
price our feeble attempt to shift costs, like taxes, are quickly swamped by others who are raising their prices also.But at least we try! There is the constant struggle to efficiency.

The state does not
bother. If it requires more money it raises taxes.End of story.We of course know that that is not the end of the story.We
know that even so called progressive taxes fall unevenly on the economy and hit hardest on those at the bottom or in sectors
that can not raise prices or shift the burden.But from the government’s
point of view this is irrelevant.Faced with increasing demand for the use of
the intersection the government bureaucrat does not think how can I increase efficiency, his role has been narrowly circumscribed
to limited areas of action.Widen the road.Or, . . . well widening the road is pretty much the only tool in their kit.

For thirty years the
technology to use transponders and radio signals to switch intersection traffic has been available and ignored by the public
sector.Where have been the politicians?Look, don’t even start with me.You know where the politicians have
been. (Whenever there are layoffs in municipal governments it is always the young traffic engineers, with the advanced degrees
in systems and planning that are let go and the old guys with the orange vests and tape measures that are retained.This is a standing joke in Public Administration.(Well,
OK, so they are not comedians.))

Since the Eighties
computer technology could have been added to the systems to make them more efficient by a factor of 10.During the Olympics in Los Angeles a huge advertising campaign
was launched to discourage needless driving to avoid traffic jams during the games.Measurements showed that traffic was reduced by only 10%.However, this
10% reduction was enough to eliminate the traffic jams.People simply changing
their schedules by slight margins eliminated the traffic jams.Use charges
could do the same thing.

In addition transponders
can also relay information to a smart grid of traffic controls so that the system can change, minute by minute, as the consumer
demand changes.Since the Nineties radio systems in the cars could have given
the system a two way ability to communicate with the users.To days systems could
be even more advanced.

But none of this has
been done because no one owns the roads.No one is trying to make this sector
of the economy keep up with the ever changing advances in the other sectors of the economy.Why?Selfishness.If you
owned the airport you would figure out how to increase profits, increase efficiency and they have.Bus companies, taxis, trucking companies.But not the government.Even when huge tanker trucks go missing, when we are engaged in World War IV,we shrug our shoulders, ‘what can you do?’Stupid.

So when that stolen
tanker truck is filled with explosives, or bio agent, and driven to your child’s school there is no one who has an “ownership
interest.”When that truck, loaded with explosives, moves down the public
road it is traveling through a no man’s land.No one owns it so no one
cares.This is just the same highway most of us, the bottom 75%, travel, our
needs unnoticed and without the protection of the public sector.The economist
can not advise you because this behavior is not “economic.”Why would
someone do such a thing?There is no “economic” incentive, therefore,
as far as Economics is concerned, this is human action that falls outside their science.

And just so the total
system, the traffic, the roads, and how they interrelate are the government’s responsibility:meaning no one’s responsibility.This is not just a
problem of Maine bureaucrat’s reluctance to utilize technology to make
the toll roads more efficient.All of these seemingly different things
are manifestations of how we live.How we relate to one another. Selfishness.

“Frankly my dear,
I don’t give a damn.”

You have certain
systems of thought within which you live, just as the buss, trucking, cab companies exist within the larger system.The inefficiencies of the state controlled traffic system are outside their scope:a fact of life.Something about which they may complain, but
about which they can do nothing.So too war is outside the scope of the economists.They can advise on how to administer the war, but as for why it is fought, this is
out side their science.The tax tables look objectively fair, in that everyone
within a band of income pays the same tax, yet, by the operation of the market the burden is shifted from the more efficient
sectors who have greater ability to raise prices onto those sectors with less ability to shift the burden and avoid taxes.

Chances are that
the reader, if he is in one of these privileged market sectors, does not spend much time ruminating about the fate of those
in the less fortunate sectors.Nor do the readers with the more privileged genetic
combinations spend much time thinking about those whose “God given gifts” have been less generous.At our page, “The Biology of Cognition,” we have
some recent press releases about the molecular biology of cognition.The first
one compares the thought process of a squid at the bottom of the sea and a squirrel dancing through the branches of a tree.Both share a common structure, yet the squid, who presumably has time to pause and
refresh between thoughts operates much more slowly than the squirrel’s brain which is ready to update on a second’s
notice. But like you the squirrels do not spend much time on pity for the
slow footed, or, ah, slow pawed, and unlike you there is no market to act as intermediary
between them, to connect them.

Markets allow all of
the different views to be presented, all the costs, those that have been directly incurred by the market, and those that have
been forced on it by taxes are all consolidated, and all of this information is then given to the consumer, who is free to
exercise his choice with the full knowledge of all that has been done, this information being conveyed to him by the simple
device of the price.

By removing the roads
and highways from the market important concerns, like location and time of use, are currently omitted from the calculation.This failure of accounting results from a failure of vision or perception.Your thinking is that roads are “public” and . . . and well that has pretty much been your
thinking on this subject.

You work for
NPR and you do not much think about those not so fortunate to be in possession
of a $200 million hamburger fortune or 50% Federal subsidies to keep up with
the other sectors of the economy.You have a $30 million fortune piling up from
your Fox TV employer and you bitterly complain about having to reach down into the stream of commerce a little further to
pull out the 34% more to pay the taxman. Have you ever considered who paid your
$30 million? You write your columns for the New York Times and sell your books and use your PBS airtime to promote your speaking
engagements but you do not have to stay up at night worrying about those in sectors of the economy in competition with foreign products or even actual illegal workers here in this country.

And when you are all
flying first class do you ever reflect how the cost of your tickets are redistributed through the economy?Who ends up paying?To the extent these cost are redistributed
by the free action of the market mutual consent can be our excuse.The consumers
were willing to pay.But when, for example, you add a multimillion dollar anti
missile system to the tail of your airplane at taxpayer’s expense, their can be no claim ofmutual assent.Selfishness.Such is life.

So something as seemingly
simple as transponders is entangled in a series of judgments that extend back in time to our earliest beginnings.We think of ourselves first.Then our children.Perhaps a mate.Etc.

Yet in public policy
we should try to extend ourselves just a little further.

When you look at the
sectors with the highest inflation it is difficult not to see the hand of government imposing itself and stifling advances:medicine, housing, education, transportation.As Moynihan said there is a migration to the public sector from the less efficient sectors.This is not, as the entertainment conservatives in the mass media claim, because the doctors are
lazy, or that tenants are to stupid to use their “God given abilities” to buy a home, or because teachers are
stupid and lazy, etc., etc.

All of these
sectors have their individual circumstances that cause them to lay claim for government assistance no doubt.Yet I am asking the reader to consider all the ways that the reader, acting en mass with the polity, through
the state, has allowed these sectors to limit and restrict the innovations that might increase their efficiency?In Medicine: allowing greater ease of entrance into medical services; in Housing:allowing factory methods of construction, (see Dwell), and greater access to the market; in Education applying
technology and flexible work rules; and in Transportation: allowing metering of use with transponders.

In all of these
areas there is a prejudice against the market.Yet, without market forces exercising
their influence there is no way of overcoming the selfishness that is naturally the human condition.The elite, secure in their privileged positions are perhaps no more selfish than the rest of us, yet removed
from the exigencies of circumstance, they exercise the veto over all proposal for change, in all of these areas, and freed
from having to suffer the consequences of their veto, they exercise power without responsibility.Selfishness

Golden Gate Suspension Bridge

Cables are Anchored at each end.

x

09-08-2004

Technical Correction Number
6:

OaklandSan FranciscoBayBridge

The greatest misunderstanding
about the California Department of Transportation’s (CalTran’s) proposed design to replace the existing earthquake
vulnerable Bay Bridge is not, (1), just that the proposal would used a Cable Stayed Bridge, which is itself vulnerable to
earthquake damage, that such a design has never been attempted to span 2,000 feet, (if built it would be the largest such
bridge in the world), not that CalTran has failed to test their design for damage caused by even a “small car bomb,”
(see Lecture Notes 09-04-04);the greatest misunderstanding is not these merely technical issues, nor is it, (2), the fact that this proposal is
itself a change from the original CalTran design which DID NOT include a Cable Stayed span, this span being added because
the conventional original proposal was thought by local politicians (e.g. Jerry “moon beam” Brown, Mayor of Oakland),
to be too plain;No not even this aspect which adds an element of the San Francisco
Bay Area’s frivolousness, an example of how Post Liberalism will spend billions, (the bridge is now $4 billion over
budget), on decorations for a bridge while failing to allow the construction of housing in the metropolitan area which has
resulted in the current $600,000 median home price, the legendary commutes, the
“couch surfing,” homelessness:No, though all of these things
are involved in this issue, the most misunderstood aspect of the project is that, (3), this affair provides us with yet another
example of how the American elite, here the Bay Area Post Liberal Elite, use government to take money from the people, to
exploit them, in order to advance their own interests, while still using the rhetoric of the “New Deal” and “equality”
and “opportunity” and “The People,”and though this is
hard to judge, seemingly actually believing their own lies and unaware of their hypocrisy, degeneracy, and final corruption.

The visitor may find
outline of interest.$2 billion cost over run no longer seems as important to
me.There are so many examples of corruption why pick out this one?I now doubt that we are able to communicate with one another.

1

a.Suspension bridges have anchors at either end to hold the cables.Cable stayed bridges anchor one end of the cable in the road deck itself.If
the road deck is damaged the structures geometry is changed and “progressive collapse” occurs.

b.Road deck can be damaged by earthquakes or by even a “small car bomb.”

c.No experience with such a large bridge of this type.Contractors
working on other projects at this time.

2

a.Aestheticselevated by political elite.

b.CalTrans responded to political pressure with new design but still claims that the change made for technical
reasons, i.e. to span the 2,000 feet distance, even though this distance was spanned by original design.Must have a “functional” reason.

c.Frivolity of powerful Post Liberal elite.Housing policies.Workers forced into campers.Photos of
campers at local prisons, hospitals, police stations, factories, etc.San Jose airport’s
rental of spaces to campers.Deaths due to exhausted workers falling asleep at
wheel while the disco beat goes on at Oz nightclub etc.

d.Marxist professors indoctrinate zoning policies, transportation policies, etc. to “heighten the contradictions” of “Post Capitalist”societies.Contradiction of conservative platitudes about
“free enterprise.”Collusion of Left and Right.Conspiracy of elite.

e.Post Liberal elite public policies similar to business i.e. private policies.“Administrative solutions.” World view.Elite vs. the rest of us.

3

a.Marin Ship.War effort.Period of growth during after war.War and “trust” mutual
support and identification.G. I. Bill.

b.Golden GateBridge
example of government powers to foster growth.

c.Corruption.Elite.Down
zoning.Anti growth.Bridge Directors
plum political jobs.Unions and perversion of public policy.New bridge in this pattern.Bridges of Corruption.

If only Abolhassan Astaneh were a flake he could be dismissed.
But as an internationally recognized authority on the design of steel structures, the UC Berkeley engineering professor and
his jeremiads against one of the most expensive public works projects in Caltrans history aren't so easily ignored.

It isn't just that he considers the state's plans to replace the east span of the Bay Bridge -- with its colossal
$2.9 billion price tag -- to be a boondoggle. Although that might seem reason enough to apply the brakes to a project enormously
over budget and years behind schedule, especially considering that California is nearly broke, Astaneh's chief concern has
little to do with dollars and cents.

Instead, the principal expert to whom Caltrans turned for advice on how to bolster Bay Area toll bridges after
the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake believes that the "signature" segment of the planned new eastern crossing between Yerba Buena
Island and Oakland -- a "self-anchored" span suspended from a single, 525-foot-tall tower -- could be a catastrophe waiting
to happen.

Neither he nor anyone else denies that the existing east portion, opened in 1936 and exposed as unsafe after
part of the upper deck collapsed during the deadly 1989 quake, is long overdue for replacement or major retrofitting. But
Astaneh argues that the novel design of the suspension section of the bridge -- to be the longest of its kind in the world
and comprising roughly 14 percent of the entire new east span -- is inherently unsafe in an earthquake, sandwiched as it is
between the San Andreas and Hayward faults.

While careful not to appear unconcerned about Astaneh, Caltrans officials reject his view. "We appreciate
what Professor Astaneh has to say, but we don't share the same level of concern [about seismic vulnerability]," says Caltrans
Chief Deputy Director Dan McElhinney, who is overseeing the new bridge project. "A good many engineers and others have looked
at the design and have determined that the bridge will be safe."

Astaneh has spent the last six years telling anyone who will listen that a major quake with an epicenter near
the bridge could cause the 1,850-foot-long suspension segment of the planned 1.5-mile crossing to crumble into the bay like
a giant Erector set. After years of delay, work on the rest of the eastern bridge, a long causeway officially referred to
as a "skyway" but derided by critics as a "freeway on stilts," began in 2002. In the last year, huge cranes hauled in to drive
pilings deep into the bay's muddy bottom have become a familiar part of the landscape.

Even with the skyway construction under way, the project remains problematic. Caltrans is rudderless after
Jeff Morales, an appointee of former Gov. Gray Davis and a driving force behind the bridge project, resigned as director earlier
this month after three years on the job to make way for someone of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's choosing.

Amid little fanfare, Caltrans in January once again pushed back the opening of bids on construction of the
suspension span's tower and cables until late May. Caltrans now says it will be 2010 -- or 21 years after the Loma Prieta
quake served notice about the vulnerability of the existing bridge -- before the new one is complete. Only three years ago
officials were saying it would be ready by 2006 or 2007. Since then costs have soared, more than doubling original estimates.
Citing the enormous challenge associated with building the one-of-a-kind suspension span, key contractors continue to balk
at Caltrans' construction timetable, making Astaneh's design critique appear to be more relevant than ever.

But the professor's misgivings about the span's seismic characteristics are only part of the bad news from
someone whose advice about steel bridges has long been in high demand and who was part of the research team called upon to
help pinpoint the cause of the World Trade Center collapse after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He insists the new
bridge, too, is vulnerable to a potential terrorist bombing.

Astaneh says that a limited analysis based on computer modeling suggests that even a relatively small car
bomb at the right spot could cause the entire suspension span to collapse, something that experts say is next to impossible
with the Golden Gate Bridge or either of the Bay Bridge's existing spans. He says Caltrans should get independent security
consultants to conduct extensive blast resistance tests, which he believes the agency has neglected to do, and determine once
and for all whether the bridge will be capable of absorbing the explosion of a terrorist bomb. "It is ironic," says Astaneh,
"that after all these years and so much money the new bridge in my view will be more, not less, vulnerable than the span we
now have."

Caltrans' McElhinney says the matter "has been looked at by a variety of federal agencies." Caltrans, he says,
is "doing all that we can to provide a structure that considers possible attacks on the bridge," including creating plans
for the U.S. Coast Guard and the California Highway Patrol to monitor the span. He declines to specify what sort of blast
tests may have been conducted or by whom. But Herb Rothman, the New York-based principal design engineer of the suspension
segment, is less circumspect when asked if the design has been examined for vulnerability to a car bomb.

"We didn't design for blast," he says.

There is little disagreement about one thing: Building the curved suspension span is a huge challenge, requiring
engineering methods never before attempted in a seismic zone.

With a typical straight-decked suspension structure, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, towers are erected first,
the main cables are hung between them, and the deck is attached to the cables. That process is reversed with a self-anchored
suspension bridge. Because the suspension cables are anchored in the deck, rather than in the ground at either end of the
bridge, the deck must be placed high above the water on a temporary edifice known as "falsework." Then the cables attaching
it to the tower are connected.

This means building two bridges -- one temporary and the other permanent. Seismic issues aside, the method
required to construct such a bridge makes it enormously costly compared to other design alternatives. That is why two engineers
with international stature, who served on an advisory panel entrusted with recommending a winner among several competing designs
deemed less aesthetic, opposed the self-anchored concept.

"[It] is simply not an efficient and rational structure," says Manabu Ito, a professor emeritus at Tokyo University
who is among Japan's most renowned structural engineers. Ito was part of the 36-member advisory panel assembled by the Metropolitan
Transportation Commission in 1997 to help decide what kind of bridge to build after political winds prompted a shift in Caltrans'
original aim of merely retrofitting the existing east span.

Critics complained that the competition was hardly that at all, and describe the MTC's deliberations as rife
with conflicts of interest, noting that several of the advisory panelists were connected to contractors whose designs they
were responsible for judging.

Besides Ito, another notable dissenter was T.Y. Lin, a professor emeritus at UC Berkeley whose pioneering
work in prestressed concrete had a profound influence on modern structural design. After the MTC's 1998 final approval of
the self-anchored suspension span, Lin denigrated the choice as a "monument to engineering stupidity" and predicted that if
built, the bridge would become a "laughingstock."

Lin, who died recently, said little publicly about the new bridge after those blistering remarks. His critique
might have attracted more attention had he not been in the awkward position of having promoted his own design for the east
span while a member of the MTC advisory group. In the end, the winning concept was submitted by a consortium that included
the company Lin founded half a century ago and later sold, T.Y. Lin International of San Francisco.

Several people close to Lin during the 16 months that the advisory committee held its hearings say the legendary
engineer harbored some of the same safety concerns about the self-anchored design that Astaneh expresses. "There's no question
that he had misgivings about it," says Steve C. Thompson, a Mill Valley architect who also served on the panel.

R. Gary Black, a UC Berkeley professor of architecture (who, partnering
with Astaneh, promoted his own bridge design for a time), agrees. "I talked to T.Y. extensively during that time, and he had
two issues with [the chosen] design. One was cost. He just thought it was a needless waste to build a bridge that way. And
the other was potential safety. He hadn't done the kind of work that Professor Astaneh had done, but he felt it didn't really
make sense to build [that type of bridge] in a seismic zone."

Unlike regular suspension bridges, where the main cables are connected to large concrete anchor blocks firmly
buried in solid ground, the self-anchored bridge's cables will be hooked directly to the deck. The cables will run from beneath
the deck on one side, up to the tower and down to beneath the deck on the other side, before looping back up and over the
tower in the opposite direction.

"Think of a tower holding up a tray," Astaneh says. "Instead of being anchored in the ground, as is traditionally
the case, the bridge is essentially holding itself up. That means if there is a sufficient rupture, all or part of the span
could unravel."

An aspect of the design that Astaneh finds particularly troublesome is the tonguelike connector joints linking
the suspension portion of the bridge with the skyway. A quake powerful enough to cause the earth beneath the bridge to shift,
a phenomenon known as permanent displacement, could make the suspension span and skyway break apart, he says.

In the Loma Prieta quake, connector joints were the culprit when ground motion triggered a partial collapse
of the existing bridge. Land beneath the span moved about 12 inches, snapping bolts that held segments of the bridge together.
The result: A 50-foot-long section of the upper roadway collapsed at one end and fell onto the lower roadway at the ninth
pier from the East Bay shore.

Given the steel truss design of the existing span at the break point, even if the lower deck had given way
the worst that would have happened is that the bridge would have been severed at Pier E-9, like a gap in a row of teeth, says
Astaneh. "But with a self-anchored suspension span, permanent displacement could cause a completely different story," he says.
"Because the suspension cables are anchored into the deck, should the deck give way and lose compression, there's nothing
to hold the cables. The entire [suspension] span could unravel."

Herb Rothman, the bridge's chief design engineer, discounts that scenario. "This bridge will be very well
suited to a high seismic area," says Rothman, 79, whose professional credits include having been project engineer during construction
of New York's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the 1960s. "As far as we're concerned, the bridge has ideal earthquake characteristics,
and meets all the standards that the state mandated for it."

Although a few smaller self-anchoring spans using two towers have been built in the last 20 years, including
one in Japan and another in South Korea, the Bay Bridge crossing will be by far the world's longest self-anchored structure
borne by a single tower. As a result, Astaneh notes, there are no seismic performance data available for this type of bridge.
"If they build this bridge and the Hayward fault ruptures, there is a high probability that the resulting earthquake would
severely damage the bridge, and possibly cause a partial or catastrophic failure of the main span," he says.

Astaneh shared his concerns with MTC officials before the advisory panel approved the design in 1998. He did
so again in 1999 after then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with help from the Navy, succeeded in delaying final state and
federal approvals following a brouhaha over the span's alignment across Yerba Buena Island property owned by the Navy. (The
federal land has since been turned over to the city of San Francisco.) Alarmed that little was happening to replace the unsafe
existing bridge more than a decade after the Loma Prieta quake, the Clinton administration intervened in 2000 to help settle
the dispute.

After hearing a lengthy presentation from Astaneh in 1999, Brown held a news conference the next day to announce
his opposition to the single-tower design, saying he was convinced it was unsafe. Although critics accused him of posturing,
suggesting that Brown's agenda was to torpedo any design that might interfere with plans by politically connected friends
to develop part of Yerba Buena Island, the mayor never recanted his safety concerns.

With a boost from Brown, Astaneh was dispatched to Washington, D.C., where he gained an audience with Clinton
administration staffers including a high-level assistant to then-Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. With Brown and the
Navy resisting the self-anchored design on one side, and Caltrans, the MTC, and Gov. Davis pushing for the bridge project
to move forward on the other, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was called in to study the issue.

Although the Army engineers gave their seal of approval to the bridge design, a voluminous Corps report issued
in October 2000 can hardly be classified as a ringing endorsement. About the best the engineers could say about the seismic
concerns Astaneh had raised was that "the design team is moving along a path to design a bridge that meets the seismic performance
criteria" established by the MTC.

The Army Corps concluded that the bridge was not designed for a "maximum credible earthquake," or MCE, along
either of the two nearby fault lines. An MCE denotes the most severe ground motion considered possible at a given location.
Scientists say the San Andreas fault, which runs beneath the peninsula on which San Francisco rests, is capable of producing
an MCE of 8.0 on the Richter scale, and that the Hayward fault, which passes beneath the Oakland hills within five miles of
the bridge, could produce a 7.25 shaker. By comparison, the Loma Prieta quake, which, among other things, collapsed the Cypress
Freeway in West Oakland, killing 42 people, and killed another person on the Bay Bridge, measured 7.1. But its epicenter was
60 miles south of the bridge; experts say damage to the span would have been worse had the epicenter been closer.

Caltrans and the new Bay Bridge's designers say their plan incorporates the highest seismic safeguards. But
they based their calculations on a different model, called the "safety evaluation earthquake." SEE places more emphasis on
the probability of a major quake occurring during the bridge's anticipated 150-year life span.

The Army engineers didn't take a position on which is the better approach. Neither did they pass judgment
on the self-anchored bridge's seismic characteristics compared to other designs.

"On a scale of A to F weighing seismic safety reliability and cost efficiency, where A is the best system
and F is unacceptable, how would you rate the standard anchored suspension bridge and the proposed self-anchored, asymmetric
single tower, pile-supported East Span replacement?" reads a question posed in an appendix to the Army Corps report. The engineers'
response: "The rating requested in this question is outside the current scope of work."

The MTC board voted 11-1 in favor of the self-anchored design recommended by its advisory panel. Then-Oakland
Mayor Elihu Harris was the lone dissenter, at the time citing cost and aesthetics as his primary objections. His successor,
Jerry Brown, took a similar position. Looking back, Harris now says, "I think [the MTC] was too eager to get on with it. And
it was too dismissive of Astaneh."

Although his expertise remains highly sought-after by others, Astaneh says he has paid a price as the bridge's
chief naysayer.

After he spoke out, Caltrans halted payments on a $500,000 grant to the university's engineering department
for work being done under Astaneh's supervision. "Caltrans is not good at tolerating dissent," he says. Caltrans denies any
retaliation, saying budget cuts forced it to scale back spending for academic research.

Inevitably, Astaneh's stance has been labeled as sour grapes by some who note that a competing bridge design
that he and R. Gary Black submitted was among those that the MTC panel rejected. The suggestion draws a chuckle from the professor.
"Oh, come on," he says. "More than 275,000 people a day cross that bridge. We're talking about people's lives." As for his
design, he insists, "We were very proud of it, but from my perspective it was as much an exercise for my students as anything.
I never expected that it would be chosen, and I certainly wasn't heartbroken over it when it wasn't."

Even now, he says, if the governor or someone else were to ask, he would recommend scrapping the self-anchored
span and finding another way to link Yerba Buena Island and the East Bay, even if it meant merely extending the skyway. But
he isn't on a crusade.

"My friends and my wife have said, 'Why not just be quiet about the bridge?' But it's very simple. If, God
forbid, a tragedy should occur on that span someday, I don't want anyone to say I didn't do enough to speak up."

R. Gary Black, a UC Berkeley professor of architecture (who, partnering with Astaneh, promoted his
own bridge design for a time), agrees. "I talked to T.Y. extensively during that time, and he had two issues with [the chosen]
design. One was cost. He just thought it was a needless waste to build a bridge that way. And the other was potential safety.
He hadn't done the kind of work that Professor Astaneh had done, but he felt it didn't really make sense to build [that type
of bridge] in a seismic zone."

Unlike regular suspension bridges, where the main cables are connected to large concrete anchor blocks firmly
buried in solid ground, the self-anchored bridge's cables will be hooked directly to the deck. The cables will run from beneath
the deck on one side, up to the tower and down to beneath the deck on the other side, before looping back up and over the
tower in the opposite direction.

"Think of a tower holding up a tray," Astaneh says. "Instead of being anchored in the ground, as is traditionally
the case, the bridge is essentially holding itself up. That means if there is a sufficient rupture, all or part of the span
could unravel."

An aspect of the design that Astaneh finds particularly troublesome is the tonguelike connector joints linking
the suspension portion of the bridge with the skyway. A quake powerful enough to cause the earth beneath the bridge to shift,
a phenomenon known as permanent displacement, could make the suspension span and skyway break apart, he says.

In the Loma Prieta quake, connector joints were the culprit when ground motion triggered a partial collapse
of the existing bridge. Land beneath the span moved about 12 inches, snapping bolts that held segments of the bridge together.
The result: A 50-foot-long section of the upper roadway collapsed at one end and fell onto the lower roadway at the ninth
pier from the East Bay shore.

Given the steel truss design of the existing span at the break point, even if the lower deck had given way
the worst that would have happened is that the bridge would have been severed at Pier E-9, like a gap in a row of teeth, says
Astaneh. "But with a self-anchored suspension span, permanent displacement could cause a completely different story," he says.
"Because the suspension cables are anchored into the deck, should the deck give way and lose compression, there's nothing
to hold the cables. The entire [suspension] span could unravel."

Herb Rothman, the bridge's chief design engineer, discounts that scenario. "This bridge will be very well
suited to a high seismic area," says Rothman, 79, whose professional credits include having been project engineer during construction
of New York's Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in the 1960s. "As far as we're concerned, the bridge has ideal earthquake characteristics,
and meets all the standards that the state mandated for it."

Although a few smaller self-anchoring spans using two towers have been built in the last 20 years, including
one in Japan and another in South Korea, the Bay Bridge crossing will be by far the world's longest self-anchored structure
borne by a single tower. As a result, Astaneh notes, there are no seismic performance data available for this type of bridge.
"If they build this bridge and the Hayward fault ruptures, there is a high probability that the resulting earthquake would
severely damage the bridge, and possibly cause a partial or catastrophic failure of the main span," he says.

Astaneh shared his concerns with MTC officials before the advisory panel approved the design in 1998. He did
so again in 1999 after then-San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with help from the Navy, succeeded in delaying final state and
federal approvals following a brouhaha over the span's alignment across Yerba Buena Island property owned by the Navy. (The
federal land has since been turned over to the city of San Francisco.) Alarmed that little was happening to replace the unsafe
existing bridge more than a decade after the Loma Prieta quake, the Clinton administration intervened in 2000 to help settle
the dispute.

After hearing a lengthy presentation from Astaneh in 1999, Brown held a news conference the next day to announce
his opposition to the single-tower design, saying he was convinced it was unsafe. Although critics accused him of posturing,
suggesting that Brown's agenda was to torpedo any design that might interfere with plans by politically connected friends
to develop part of Yerba Buena Island, the mayor never recanted his safety concerns.

With a boost from Brown, Astaneh was dispatched to Washington, D.C., where he gained an audience with Clinton
administration staffers including a high-level assistant to then-Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater. With Brown and the
Navy resisting the self-anchored design on one side, and Caltrans, the MTC, and Gov. Davis pushing for the bridge project
to move forward on the other, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was called in to study the issue.

Although the Army engineers gave their seal of approval to the bridge design, a voluminous Corps report issued
in October 2000 can hardly be classified as a ringing endorsement. About the best the engineers could say about the seismic
concerns Astaneh had raised was that "the design team is moving along a path to design a bridge that meets the seismic performance
criteria" established by the MTC.

The Army Corps concluded that the bridge was not designed for a "maximum credible earthquake," or MCE, along
either of the two nearby fault lines. An MCE denotes the most severe ground motion considered possible at a given location.
Scientists say the San Andreas fault, which runs beneath the peninsula on which San Francisco rests, is capable of producing
an MCE of 8.0 on the Richter scale, and that the Hayward fault, which passes beneath the Oakland hills within five miles of
the bridge, could produce a 7.25 shaker. By comparison, the Loma Prieta quake, which, among other things, collapsed the Cypress
Freeway in West Oakland, killing 42 people, and killed another person on the Bay Bridge, measured 7.1. But its epicenter was
60 miles south of the bridge; experts say damage to the span would have been worse had the epicenter been closer.

Caltrans and the new Bay Bridge's designers say their plan incorporates the highest seismic safeguards. But
they based their calculations on a different model, called the "safety evaluation earthquake." SEE places more emphasis on
the probability of a major quake occurring during the bridge's anticipated 150-year life span.

The Army engineers didn't take a position on which is the better approach. Neither did they pass judgment
on the self-anchored bridge's seismic characteristics compared to other designs.

"On a scale of A to F weighing seismic safety reliability and cost efficiency, where A is the best system
and F is unacceptable, how would you rate the standard anchored suspension bridge and the proposed self-anchored, asymmetric
single tower, pile-supported East Span replacement?" reads a question posed in an appendix to the Army Corps report. The engineers'
response: "The rating requested in this question is outside the current scope of work."

The MTC board voted 11-1 in favor of the self-anchored design recommended by its advisory panel. Then-Oakland
Mayor Elihu Harris was the lone dissenter, at the time citing cost and aesthetics as his primary objections. His successor,
Jerry Brown, took a similar position. Looking back, Harris now says, "I think [the MTC] was too eager to get on with it. And
it was too dismissive of Astaneh."

Although his expertise remains highly sought-after by others, Astaneh says he has paid a price as the bridge's
chief naysayer.

After he spoke out, Caltrans halted payments on a $500,000 grant to the university's engineering department
for work being done under Astaneh's supervision. "Caltrans is not good at tolerating dissent," he says. Caltrans denies any
retaliation, saying budget cuts forced it to scale back spending for academic research.

Inevitably, Astaneh's stance has been labeled as sour grapes by some who note that a competing bridge design
that he and R. Gary Black submitted was among those that the MTC panel rejected. The suggestion draws a chuckle from the professor.
"Oh, come on," he says. "More than 275,000 people a day cross that bridge. We're talking about people's lives." As for his
design, he insists, "We were very proud of it, but from my perspective it was as much an exercise for my students as anything.
I never expected that it would be chosen, and I certainly wasn't heartbroken over it when it wasn't."

Even now, he says, if the governor or someone else were to ask, he would recommend scrapping the self-anchored
span and finding another way to link Yerba Buena Island and the East Bay, even if it meant merely extending the skyway. But
he isn't on a crusade.

"My friends and my wife have said, 'Why not just be quiet about the bridge?' But it's very simple. If, God
forbid, a tragedy should occur on that span someday, I don't want anyone to say I didn't do enough to speak up."

12-23-2004

Technical
Correction:Number Seven

Biotechnology
Now!

The
single biggest mistake people make about biotechnology is the belief that biotechnology
will affect our children or grandchildren but that it will not affect us.

The
thought is that unborn children or at least young children will live long enough, or at least that one must be young for biotechnology
to change you, change your cells.

This
is the big mistake.That only young tissue or young cells can be changed but
our old bodies, we are too set in our ways, we can not be changed.

This
mistake results from a fundamental misunderstanding about time and existence.

What
you are, this moment in time, is taking place right now.You are not your memory.Your psychology may be your memory, psychologically we exist in memory.Some teach that we live in the now, the present moment.Psychologically
this is not possible.Psychologically
we must process information, compare it to our memory, we live over time, in the construction of our memory.Thoughts do take time.The present moment is so short
that you can not even say your name.

But
physically we live now, in an unimaginably short moment of time.In the present
moment there is no movement the universe is frozen in a static instant.

This is
not merely a hypothetical proposition.The whole universe exists in a moment
of time measured by Dr. Max Plank as 10-43 seconds.All of history
is only 10-43 seconds in the past.The future only 10-43
seconds from now.The universe suspended in this moment of time.We have the sense of time only because we have memory.Mountains
have no memory, they exists in this moment, this instant in time, 10-43 seconds in duration. (This moment is not
a single moment for all observers in the universe, which depends on relative motion and position of the observers.Time and space are strangely intertwined in a way not yet explained.There is not a single moment, but each observer’s moment is only 10-43 seconds in duration.)

Our memory allows us to reconstruct this moment and compare it to our memory and see the
changes that have taken place.But in the moment of the now, nothing changes,
nothing moves, there is absolute stillness.

This
is were our cells exist.They have no individual memory.They simply exist in a moment of time.Change them and they
are instantly changed.They do not say, ‘No, stop, this is not who I am.’There is no resistance.

As
soon as your cells are changed, they are changed, there is no need for a ‘period of adjustment.’

This error
in thinking may also explain why the dangers of bio-warfare are not fully accepted.People understand in principle that at virus might enter their bodies and kill them in a matter of hours yet modern
medicine has protected them for the most part and so they have become complacent.However,
just as a damaging virus can take control of your DNA and cause damage, we will soon be able to design new DNA for you, which when injected will also, again, within hours change you, for the better.

For
example, as soon as we learn how to increase oxygen uptake in our neurons, as soon as we change the genetic code, it is changed.Immediately your brain responds to that change.Immediately you are changed.

We
are not talking about something in the far off future that only concerns your children or grand children.